I wait. Tread water. Count my heartbeats. Bleed an invitation out into the depths.

I’m here. I came back.

There’s nothing, though. There never is. So I start swimming. Toward the light. I’m slicing through the waves. Pushing against a current that’s trying to pull me even farther into the emptiness. I spit out water and keep going.

The others are waiting on shore. I haul myself out of the sound, panting and dripping. Sand clings to our feet. And legs. The sea runs down our back in little rivers, and we shiver together.

My mother is still lost to me. Still dead. But I’m alive. The ragged breath in my throat and the burn of my muscles is enough to make me know it. At least in this moment.

I’m alive.

The beach is almost empty now. Everyone else is gone. Or leaving. They’re shaking off their towels and heading back up to the cabins, but someone’s left an abandoned blanket near the fire. Jude grabs us a couple of new beers from the cooler—one for him and Lex to share and one for me and Val—then the four of us pile in close, greedy for warmth, as the water evaporates and the salt tightens on our skin.

Jude and Lex and Valeria are fishing for information about each other. They’re sharing carefully curated pieces of themselves, passing little bits of their lives around like shiny gold coins.

Val has a boyfriend back in LA. He keeps texting her. Chester. She makes a face when she says his name. “I know, I know. It’s a horrible name,” she tells us. “It sounds like somebody’s weird uncle. But he’s hot . . . so . . .” She shrugs and shows us a pic on her phone, and he’s all brooding eyes and bad boy energy. But she’s not sure she loves him.

At least not that much.

She wants to be an actress. Movies, though. Not the stage. “There’s no money in live theatre,” she warns us.

Jude’s from Macon, Georgia. He’s a year older than the rest of us, so he’s heading off to college in the fall. University of North Carolina. Chapel Hill. He wants to study dance. Ballet, to be specific. “My mom thinks it’s stupid, though.” He runs a hand over his chest, and I see the glint of dried salt crystals against dark skin. “She’s pissed because my sister’s studying eighteenth-century British poetry or some shit like that, so we’re both gonna be broke as fuck. And who’s gonna take care of her in her old age?” He shrugs. “She wants me to major in accounting. And she’s paying, so it’s whatever.”